Medical Intelligence Center Monitors Health Threats

October 10, 2012

By Cheryl PellerinAmerican Forces Press Service

From a windowless building behind barriers and fences here, scientists, physicians and other experts monitor a range of intelligence and open-source channels for threats to the health of U.S. forces and the homeland.

But the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Center for Medical Intelligence, known as NCMI, is an intelligence organization, not a public health organization.

The job, NCMI Director Air Force Col. (Dr.) Anthony M. Rizzo told American Forces Press Service, is not to tell the public what is happening. “It is our responsibility to tell policymakers and planners … what we believe is going to happen,” he explained.

The center’s intelligence targets are medical and scientific issues. Its products, like those of the rest of the intelligence community, are predictive analysis and products for warning, produced in four divisions whose experts follow developments in infectious disease, environmental health, global health systems and medical science and technology.

NCMI is the primary source of medical intelligence in the federal government, Rizzo said, “so as a consequence, we have to write for all levels, all customers, … from the president down to the most tactical intelligence officer or surgeon in the field.”